Lieberman's thief al-4

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The hard gray and dusty red of squat city buildings gave way to hulking factories and then the expressway. Concrete and green exit signs. Cars with drivers minding their own business. The sound of swishing tires and radio voices.

  George got off at Peterson, turned onto Lincoln, and drove past hot dog stands, one-fuck motels, and Jew bookstores. A Buick dealer and a barbecue restaurant on his left, Goodyear tire center on his right, and then Devon. Different world. Trees, houses with space between them even on the main drag, too cold for people to be walking or meeting with their neighbors over the fence.

  When he got to the Roziers' street, George checked for dog walkers. Unpredictable. Always a problem. Dog walkers. Who could predict the bladder control of a poodle? George knew of two burglars personally who had been turned up because of dog walkers with notebooks or good memories.

  He pulled into the driveway of the Rozier house at the end of the cul-de-sac. He drove over the neatly fitted red bricks and sat for a few seconds looking at the lights in the house. He was sure the Roziers had left the lights on to discourage people like George Patniks. They had left the lights on every week when they went to the chamber music series.

  "In for it all now, George," he said to himself, as he had said before every job he had done in the last two decades. He stepped out of his car.

  He hurried around the side of the house to the kitchen. George could hear music inside the house. He didn't stop. He knew the radio was on a timer, that the station would change every fifteen or twenty minutes as if someone were fooling with the dials.

  The dining room window at the side of the house was wired as he remembered and expected. It wasn't a bad system, connected to both the local police and the Everwatch System office. George put down the toolbox, took the glass cutter from his pocket, checked the second hand on his watch, took a breath, and moved quickly to cut a more or less round hole in the glass. From the moment he began the cut, George knew he had to hurry. Everwatch Security gave the homeowner a full twenty-five seconds to get to the phone and turn off the system. He reached in and opened the window and climbed in. The music was loud, something classical, light, breaking champagne glasses and giggles that were implied rather than released. He hurried through the dining room with its eight high-backed wooden chairs around a table with spindly animal legs and went right through the kitchen door, heading for the phone on the wall near the back door. He put the tool chest down, opened it almost silently, and pulled out the wire cutter. He pulled the phone from the hook on the wall, turned it over, found the wires he was looking for, and snipped neatly. He was breathing hard as he checked his watch. Sixteen seconds.

  George had made it with nine seconds to spare.

  A sound from above, like footsteps. Somebody home? A creaking step or floorboard? Hard to tell over the blaring music. George stood for twenty seconds or so until he was reasonably satisfied that no one was there. He hurried across the kitchen floor.

  George needed no flashlight The Roziers had provided him with all the light he needed and more than he wanted. He planned to move fast, check the case spots, go for the jewelry, and forget the big things. If he was lucky, the Roziers would come home, maybe have a drink, and head for bed without noticing the small hole in the window and not discovering that the kitchen phone was out of order at least till the next morning.

  George had his hand on the kitchen door when his world exploded.

  Voices. From beyond the door. Two. Arguing. Sounded like a man and woman. Coming downstairs. Coming fast.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Go for the window. Too late. Too far. They were heading for the kitchen. Fast. The kitchen was big. One night-light near the sink. Table, modern, and six chairs around it to his left. Working table in the middle of the room. Big butcher's block. Walls lined with cupboards, dishwasher, refrigerator. Door. A pantry or closet. George stepped inside.

  Pantry. No window. The toolbox. His toolbox. It was out mere, sitting in the middle of the kitchen. Well, maybe not the middle, but still hard to miss. Too late. The kitchen door was opening. George closed the pantry door, praying mat it was well oiled and that the toolbox would be overlooked.

  The kitchen door burst open.

  "Harvey, Harvey," the woman wept as George pressed his back against a shelf of cans. "Please."

  Harvey didn't answer. And the woman sounded weird.

  What were they doing home? What the hell were they…?

  Something scratched across the tile floor.

  "God, no. Please."

  George moved from the wall of cans and pitty-pittied to the pantry door, opening it a crack. Pitty-pitty on frightened little cat Rockports.

  The white nightgown of Dana Rozier was bright with Wood and open to her stomach. She staggered backward toward the kitchen door. Harvey Rozier strode silently toward her. He wore some kind of white floor-length smock that made him look like a mad scientist George had seen in some English horror movie about zombies on channel 32.

  Dana Rozier was going for the door. She had no chance of making it without help, and George was sure that if he stepped out of the pantry he'd be covered in his own blood within a couple of heartbeats. Rozier was too big for him, in better shape, and carrying the biggest fucking knife George Patniks had ever seen.

  George pushed the door open a little more, wondering what the hell Rozier was planning to do. That was when Rozier tripped over George's toolbox. The knife flew out of his hand and spun across the floor. Rozier went sprawling, smock billowing awkwardly.

  Dana Rozier went for the door, losing strength. Too many bolts. She reached for the phone as her husband got to his knees and scrambled for the bloody knife.

  "No, no, no," Dana Rozier panted, unwilling, unable to turn her back on her husband.

  George, standing in the pantry doorway, watched her hit three numbers, 911 for sure. But she heard nothing as Rozier found the knife. There was nothing she could hear because George had cut the phone wires.

  Too late. Too late now. Rozier was on top of her, pulling his wife from the phone, plunging the knife in wherever her flailing arms let him through. Face, eye, scalp, chest, arms. She crumpled, whimpering, and Rozier went on.

  George didn't move, couldn't move. Rozier knelt over what was left of his dying wife, panting, his white smock splotched like a bloody Rorschach.

  George watched the exhausted man's face and heaving body and knew what was about to happen. Rozier looked back across the room to see what had tripped him. His eyes found the toolbox. He panted heavily, not understanding, and his eyes moved across the room, finding George almost instantly.

  Their eyes met. Rozier puzzled, weary, confused. George Patniks in panic. Rozier tried to rise, using the knife to prop himself up like an old man with a cane.

  George's legs were trembling and nausea tickled inside his stomach and went for his throat A sound came from George and he knew he was running, his feet sliding on the tile floor, knowing that if he went down, Rozier's knife would get him, that the dead woman's blood would snare and bind him. His back was turned to Rozier now, and he had no idea how close the man might be. George sucked in air and ran for the window through which he had cut the hole. He tucked his head between his arms and threw his body against glass and wood, hoping it would shatter, but it didn't, not completely. He tumbled into cool air, rolling on his back, arm cut. He caught a glimpse of Rozier's shadow at the window, a ghostly, sheeted shadow carrying a bloody knife, panting.

  George got to his feet and ran, ran for his car, forgetting about cuts, slashes, and murder, forgetting his tool case, and ignoring the certainty that he had fouled his underwear and legs.

  He slid into the driver's seat of the Toyota, cracking his knee against the steering wheel, and locked the door with one hand as he turned the key with the other. Rozier wasn't at the door. Not yet. He threw the car in reverse and tried to keep calm, keep from hitting the birdbath or the bushes and slamming into the trees mat lined the driveway.

  He let his eyes mov
e upward quickly as he screeched backward into the night, and what he saw was as frightening as the murder he had witnessed.

  Rozier hadn't moved from the window. He stood, motionless, looking directly at George Patniks. Their eyes met again as George hit the gas and swirled madly and loudly down the red-brick driveway. George wouldn't swear, but he was pretty goddamn sure that Harvey Rozier was smiling at him.

  In Which Things Go Awry

  Pitty-Pitty Patniks was wrong. Harvey Rozier had not been smiling. His evening had gone even worse than the burglar's. When he was sure that the madly retreating car of the burglar hadn't struck a tree, a house, or a pedestrian, Harvey turned back into the room, wiped the handle of the knife on his linen floor-length robe, and threw it in the general direction of his wife's body. He didn't want to look at her. It had taken months of fear and anger to go through with the murder, and now he wanted to, had to, convince himself, hypnotize himself as best he could into believing, that the lie he would tell was truth.

  Harvey had seen many of his clients lie so convincingly to the press and the Internal Revenue Service that he was sure they had convinced themselves of the lie. Trudeau. Martin Trudeau, millionaire leader of the Evangelical Free Church of Christ, had lied to the IRS. Took a lie detector test Results were inconclusive. Could Harvey pass a lie detector test? Possibly, he thought, forcing himself to look at Dana's body once more to be sure she was dead. Possibly.

  One thing to plan. Harvey was a great planner. Another thing to execute. He hadn't planned on Dana running down the stairs. He wanted it to look as if she had been surprised in bed by an intruder. Now he had a trail of blood, bloody footprints, and a goddamn witness.

  She was dead.

  He tried not to think about the burglar, at least not consciously at first. He had a plan. He had to execute the plan. He would… He had stripped naked except for the sneakers. He washed his bloody, surgically gloved hands, dried them on a relatively clean corner of the robe, and got a plastic Hefty garbage bag from under the sink. He threw in the white linen robe he'd purchased two weeks ago on a business trip to Lexington and carried ate bag to the back door, taking care that it picked up no blood. He opened die door, stepped out, and walked to the brick driveway, where be removed the sneakers and surgical gloves and dropped them into the plastic garbage bag. There was a faint trail of partially footprinted blood leading from the house.

  If the burglar goes to the police, Harvey thought, hurrying barefoot up the stairs, he runs die risk of being accused of Dana's murder, but this guy was a burglar, not a murderer. Harvey got in the shower and turned on the hot water, letting it scald his chest. He covered himself with soap-liquid soap-head to toe. Had to be fast. Harvey was shivering, trembling. He heard something and threw open the shower curtains. Had some neighbor heard the damn burglar go through the dining room window and called the police? Nothing, no one, just the blare of music from the stereo speaker downstairs. He closed the curtains but not all the way, pushing back the fantasy of Dana as a blood-drenched zombie coming up the stairs with a knife in her stained hand.

  And the burglar, the burglar, goddamn it, the burglar. The burglar might not be very bright. He might not think it through, might not realize that he was in big trouble if he stepped forward. He might go to the police and describe what he had seen, identify Harvey as Dana's killer. Would he be believed? Would he reemerge when he had calmed down in a week, two, a month, and try to blackmail him?

  Harvey turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, reaching for a towel.

  Had to hurry. Think on the way.

  He was back in his tux and down the stairs, avoiding the trail of Dana's blood on the carpet. One last quick look around. The door to the kitchen was closed.

  "All right," he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice made his hands tremble. "All right," he demanded, and his hands obeyed. "What have I forgotten? The toolbox."

  He moved back to the kitchen door, opened it with his elbow, avoiding the bloody trail, and went straight to the burglar's toolbox. He wiped the box with a dish towel and left it sitting in the middle of the room for an instant, an island in a sea of blood. Then he picked up the toolbox, holding it away from his body, went to the sink, washed off the already-drying blood, and moved to the door to the garage, glancing at Dana's deep-red-against-white corpse. She had stopped bleeding. He hid the toolbox in plain sight, beginning to panic, already making up an excuse-loose bowels, nausea-if the concert was over when he got back to the Bismarck. He checked himself for blood stains and found none.

  By the time he returned with the Franklins to discover Dana's body, the doorknob would be a blur of finger and palm prints.

  It was the best he could do. It wasn't quite the way he had planned, but…

  He went out the side door and walked barefoot to the head of the driveway. Behind the house, through the trees at the end of the cul-de-sac, Harvey made his way carefully along the narrow path. Not much light, but enough. A thin spring rain tapped against the trees, which were just starting to get a new coat of green leaves, black in the moonless and starless night. He was a dark Santa carrying a dark bag of blood. No one in sight on Kilgore, the next street south, where he had parked the rented Geo Prizm. He opened the trunk, threw in die bag, closed the trunk quietly, and got into the driver's seat, where he closed the door just hard enough to turn off the "door ajar" light. He put on the socks and shoes he had left on the passenger seat and drove away slowly, watching the dark houses on either side of the street, listening to the rain start to beat harder on the roof.

  It wasn't till he hit Howard Street and was heading for the expressway that he slammed the door firmly.

  Check the time. A little over an hour since he had left tiie men's room at the Bismarck and walked quickly to the Geo in the Grant Park underground lot. He was way off, but he still had more than an hour, even if the quartet were incompetent and rushed through the Mozart and the Vivaldi.

  He pulled the baseball cap over his eyes and drove, Kennedy to Eisenhower, back into the Grant Park underground lot, careful not to break the speed limit. The night attendant didn't even glance at him.

  Still twenty minutes. Should make it easily.

  Park in a comer. Car door echoing. Car trunk echoing. No one hi sight. No sound of approaching cars. Lot not full but not empty for this hour. He would wait a few days, maybe a week, pick up the car, and return it to Hertz.

  Harvey took the garbage bag in his arms and hurried to the garbage can near the escalator. No footsteps behind or in front. Nothing moving in the shadows of the concrete pillars. He shoved the bag into the garbage can and heaped empty bottles and stale food-covered McDonald's bags over it.

  Time left. Time left.

  He moved quickly but didn't run up the escalator and onto the street. The hotel was half a block away. Raining harder. He couldn't go back wet. He ran down the escalator, which fought him with each step, and searched frantically for something to cover himself with. A cardboard box lay limp behind the garbage can in which he had hidden the plastic bag. He grabbed the carton, ran to the street, shielded himself as the wind off the lake tried to tear his cover from his hands. Down the alley behind the hotel, he found the service entrance door he had propped open. It was still open. He dropped the soggy brown carton and went up the stairs, shoes resounding, the smell of something stale and sweet in the air.

  He opened the door carefully and struggled to catch his breath. No one in sight to his left. Down the corridor two old men in tuxedos who had ducked out on the conceit stood smoking. He pulled out his comb, used it, and decided he couldn't wait to fully control his breath.

  Harvey eased out of the stairwell and into the men's room. Empty. He washed his hands, looked at himself in the mirror, brushed back his wisps of hair, splashed his face with cold water, and stepped into the hall near the performance room. Empty except for the two men smoking and whispering, not looking his way.

  Harvey slipped into the conceit room. Rows of backs were
to him. No one seemed to turn. On the raised platform before the several hundred people on cushioned folding chairs, a thin, young Oriental woman attacked a violin, eyes closed to show her intensity and commitment. Harvey eased into the chair he had moved to the rear of the room. Ken and Betty Franklin were hi the second row, wedged in.

  Harvey picked up the small tape recorder from the floor under the chair, clicked it off, and dropped it into his pocket. He would listen to the tape as soon as he could, listen for anything unusual, a slight mistake or miscue, a coughing fit, something he could refer to, to prove he had sat through the performance.

  The instruments came to a shrill decision to end. Applause. He had made it back with more than twenty minutes to spare. The two old men who had been smoking in the corridor came in and stood, joining the applause and the bows of the performers.

  People filed past Harvey, talking of where they were going to get coffee or a drink, making soft patter about the performance.

  The Franklins found him. They were older than the Ro/iers by almost twenty years, a pair of surrogate parents and much more. She a handsome society joiner. He the senior partner of the law firm of Kyle, Timkin, and O'Doul, with offices on the same floor as Harvey's in the John Hancock Building. Harvey had left his Lexus in the garage "in case Dana might need it" and had reluctantly agreed to go with the Franklins and let Ken drive. This was shortly after Dana had become nauseated just before they were scheduled to leave. Nothing terrible, but nothing pleasant either.